The News Desk March 4
Good morning and welcome back to the News Desk! Unofficial, the annual party known for spreading drunk college students across Charleston, is tomorrow. Since this is usually the one college party we cover at the Daily Eastern News, we're going to take a look back at previous years and the history of this pseudo-holiday. I also spoke about Unofficial on the podcast, but there I'm focusing on the events of 2021's parties; was that Unofficial? Why was it such a big deal? Tune in for some analysis.
Also, Wednesday's news featured the reappearance of hate messages spread around campus via fliers. I'll include a link to that story down below, as well as to previous articles about when this has happened before.
An Unofficial Tradition Begins
It's hard to put a pin on the "first" Unofficial celebration in Charleston, because the celebration has not always been named. The best I can tell, the tradition might have moved to town as early as 2005, but it was not an original invention by Eastern's students. Though it is currently celebrated at several midwestern universities, it seems that bars located near the University of Illinois were the first to schedule special events for St. Patrick's Day before the actual holiday.
In March 1995, U of I's spring break fell over St. Patrick's Day, sending students home and away from local bars, according to "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day: The Official Story" from U of I's Archives. Those bars knew that the holiday was a major source of income and organized the "Shamrock Stagger" for the Wednesday before break. This event was advertised as the university's "official" St. Patrick's Day party. It included 10 local bars which featured specials and events to form a gigantic bar crawl.
There isn't any record of why the "official" name didn't stick, but it seems like U of I's administration wasn't a huge fan of being connected to the event in such strong words. In 1996, the party was first labeled "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day."
Chucktown Joins In
The earliest article I can find in the News which appears to feature an Unofficial-esque celebration is from March 8, 2005. Marty's served up green beer and gave out door prizes. Mother's did too, and also brought in a cover band called Rendition. Multiple people mentioned Champaign as the place to be. Roc's and Lefty's Holler didn't even join in- they waited til the actual holiday to promote specials.
For a smaller college town, Charleston has some great bar names.
Anyway, the News is pretty quiet on whatever parties looked like until 2008, when Unofficial is mentioned offhand in two separate articles. That year, students were on campus for St. Patrick's Day, but police were unconcerned about parties since it fell on a Monday. Toward the end of the article, the reporter mentioned that the owner of the Panther Paw Bar & Grill said that students had partied the weekend before for "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day" and thus might not care about the holiday itself.
An article from just two weeks earlier, which is much more focused on a man exposing himself in a restaurant, says that Mark Jenkins, police chief at that time, did not recall any unofficial St. Patrick's Day celebrations happening in previous years. The reporter seems fairly confident that the pseudo-holiday was celebrated that weekend, though.
In 2009 and 2010, the main mentions of Unofficial came from the Opinions section in the form of cartoons and a column called "Night of the living drunks."
2009: "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day," Dylan Polk
2010: "Unofficial," Sam Sottosanto
Clearly, the party had formalized in some ways over just a couple years. The name shortened to its current form and, if the 2009 cartoon is enough to go by, shirts were being made for the occasion.
Then, the News falls silent for a few more years... well, only on this topic.
In 2014, the Penalty Box's liquor license was suspended for a week and Mayor Larry Rennels told the News that the dates were chosen specifically to have the bar closed over Unofficial.
“March 7 and March 8 is when it is scheduled to be unofficial St. Pattie’s Day in Champaign and sometimes that makes its way down to Charleston so they will be suspended those two nights,” Rennels said.
This quote is interesting to me. "Sometimes" the party makes its way to Charleston? This implies that Eastern was not having Unofficial every single year. This inconsistency was about to end, though- the event has carried strong since 2014, according to further reports.
In 2015, the News featured an article focusing explicitly on Unofficial for the first time. Bars, liquor stores and police departments alike were preparing for the weekend, despite students' claims that the party wasn't that big of a deal at Eastern.
Shannon Thodos, a sophomore elementary education major, said “Unofficial” is not as big of a deal at Eastern as it is at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“It’s huge at U of I,” she said. “The whole school get together, we just don’t do that.”
Karle Weissenhofer, a sophomore hospitality major, agreed.
“I mean, to be honest, we don’t really celebrate it here,” she said. “It’s more of a thing people do when not involved in Greek life.”
Despite an apparent lack of news coverage on Unofficial, the News did run an editorial in 2016 reminding students to know their limits with alcohol and party safely.
In 2017, students who were involved with organizing the parties were willing to go on record to talk about what they were putting together. This seems risky, but resulted in an article which features such quintessential "frat boy" behavior that I find it kind of delightful.
(Ryan) Jenkins and (Thomas) Blumthal said they will be keeping an eye out for high school students trying to sneak in and underage drink at the gathering.
“I’m playing early 2000s hip-hop to keep out the non-‘90s babies,” Blumthal said.
Good plan, guys. Very high security.
Blumthal said he will be having beer pong in his backyard, but it will be different than normal beer pong with red solo cups.
He said he will be having large trash cans set up in formation for beer pong in his backyard.
“It was sort of a combination of me and my roommates who came up with the idea,” Blumthal said.
Genius! It's like beer pong... but bigger!
Really, though, it seems like the two guys did a pretty good job of fundraising and organizing to coordinate between houses on the crawl and add some games and events to the party.
Jenkins helped organize the next two years, too, and went on record once again. In 2018, "security" was implemented to dissuade fights and enforce some rules and certain organizers elected to stay sober and make themselves available to drive people home if need be. From the tone of his quotes, it seems that Jenkins was dedicated to making the party run smoothly and keeping everyone safe. The article also featured safety tips and reminders about laws applicable to the event.
2019's party included many of the same plans, with the addition of rope "barriers" around yards to keep partygoers from wandering into the streets, as well as further measures to ensure that drinks were not spiked.
Unfortunately, a student from Eastern was shot during parties following the house crawl. Here are two articles about what happened.
Nevertheless, Unofficial was back in 2020. Many of the students interviewed in this story may have already been pretty intoxicated, but emotions seemed mostly positive.
Catch up with the news.
Once again, fliers with hateful messaging have been found around campus. This also happened in early 2020, leading to a huge community reaction: Student, staff and faculty senates spoke out against the fliers, a petition was formed for the police force to take further action, and students and community members marched against hate.
This year's Miss Black EIU pageant was a great celebration for the 50th anniversary of the event! Jaedah Franks is Miss Black EIU 2022.
City Council has lifted Charleston's mask mandate and state of emergency.
Wait, we didn't talk about Unofficial 2021!
Well, it's complicated. I'll explain further in this week's episode of the podcast.
